[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Re: [OccupyCU] honesty in arguments

[Brussel, Morton K]

Carl, I appreciate your response.

I have considerable respect for Mike Weissman. He has advocated many fine things, such as opposing the Star Wars project of the Reagan years, and has been an effective activist.

But I must also say that I was almost shocked to hear from him at the time that he supported the NATO/U.S. attack on Serbia, and I believe that subsequent events have shown the harm done by it:  Destruction of lives and infrastructure of Serbia, the formation of an artificial failed and corrupt state of Kosovo, not to speak of Bosnia/Herzegovina.  Many believe that was an attack to save the idea of NATO, among the other reasons you mention. The cold war, USSR, was presumably over by then, and hence the raison d'être for NATO.. The UN charter was violated by this aggression and it was a blueprint for subsequent "humanitarian" intrusions by NATO/U.S. Others will remember the demands of NATO upon Serbia initially that subsequent to the "war" were accepted with the important deletion of the right of NATO forces to have free access to all parts of Serbia. But by then the damage had been done, and the sordid claims of NATA/U.S were revealed to be illusory.

I agree also that Yugoslavia and the remnant Serbia was an independent entity smacking of socialism, something not to the liking of U.S. policy makers. They, with their European allies (NATO), wanted to destroy it, and they did.

--Mort

On Sep 7, 2012, at 5:00 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:



Michael--

If "no one could possibly believe," these statements, it's because they're attending to Clinton's propaganda, not to the history.

(1) No, US/NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark was not "claiming that the Serb terror would continue to horrendous extents if NATO didn't attack." (There's some indication that he was quite reluctant to attack.)

As the bombing campaign began, he informed the press that it was “entirely predictable” that Serb terror would intensify as a result. Shortly after it got underway, Clark explained again that “The military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out.” Elaborating a few weeks later, he observed that the NATO operation planned by “the political leadership [of the US] ... was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb and MUP [internal police] forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea.” General Clark stated further that plans for Operation Horseshoe “have never been shared with me,” referring to the alleged Serb plan to expel the population that was publicized by NATO after the shocking Serb reaction to the bombing had become evident.

(2) Yes, "NATO [or rather Clinton; NATO did his bidding] conducted a major bombing campaign 'to curb Serbia's economic independence.'" Look again at what the members of the Clinton administration actually said:

Strobe Talbott, who was responsible for diplomacy during the war, wrote the foreword to a book on the war by his associate John Norris. Talbott writes that those who want to know “how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved” in the war should turn to Norris’s account, written with the “immediacy that can be provided only by someone who was an eyewitness to much of the action, who interviewed at length and in depth many of the participants while their memories were still fresh, and who has had access to much of the diplomatic record.” Norris states that “it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform - not the plight of Kosovar Albanians - that best explains NATO’s war.” That the motive for the NATO bombing could not have been “the plight of Kosovar Albanians” was already clear from the extensive Western documentary record. But it is interesting to hear from the highest level that the real reason for the bombing was that Yugoslavia was a lone holdout in Europe to the political and economic programs of the Clinton administration and its allies. [John Norris, "Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo" (2005)]

Regards, Carl


On Sep 7, 2012, at 3:43 PM, Michael Weissman <mbwmbwmbw at gmail.com<mailto:mbwmbwmbw at gmail.com>> wrote:

Carl-

I shouldn't get involved in this, but like they say, Ich kann nicht anders.

As you can tell from a lot of the exchanges, some people are bothered by the style of your arguments. Or is it just the content they disagree strongly with?  Sometimes easier to sort out methods on issues where we don't have strong passions. The Serbia/Kosovo campaign serves that purpose for me, because it was a while ago, the people I knew who were from the area had wildly divergent views, and I was uncertain at the time.

Looking over these arguments, it's pretty clear why people get fed up with the style. It seems like you start with a dishonest cheap shot and proceed to a statement that no one could possibly believe.

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 11:06 AM, C. G. Estabrook <cge at shout.net<mailto:cge at shout.net>> wrote:

1)
More than a dozen years ago, then-President Clinton attacked Yugoslavia for that purpose [to kill people for the profits of the American elite]- not to deter Serbian attacks against Kosovo, as he said. (As the bombing campaign began, U.S.-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark informed the press that it was “entirely predictable” that Serb terror would intensify as a result.)

You know perfectly well that Clark was claiming that the Serb terror would continue to horrendous extents if NATO didn't attack, and that a very brief intensification was the cost of stopping it. I can't even remember how accurate his claim turned out to be, but twisting it to mean something almost opposite just insults all of us.

(2)
The real purpose of the bombing campaign, months in the planning, was to curb Serbia's economic independence.


Seriously? NATO conducted a major bombing campaign "to curb Serbia's economic independence."

Maybe in retrospect lots of our "humanitarian" actions may ultimately be seen as part of an overall pattern of self-aggrandizement, power, greed, etc. But don't insult  our intelligence by telling us that NATO's strategy is governed by fears of an economically independent Serbia.

The twists and ironies of surface vs. deep motivations cut both ways.
--
Michael Weissman

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